Month: September 2011

Over the last year, while studying, I noticed there is a marked difference in my ability to concentrate for long periods, without distraction, on study material. When at university, I can recall completing sessions in excess 90 minutes quite easily. These days I struggle to hit two pomodoro successively without a distraction. And major ones at that.

I have surmised that modern technology and the internet has a part to play. After all, at university I didn’t have a internet connected device in my pocket. I had to walk over to the the computer lab. (We were so jealous of the computer science “nerds” who had connections in their residence rooms.) In the last few months I have come across a few articles where this was mentioned in passing. Today, purely by chance I happened to see an interview with William Powers at the recent Melbourne Writer’s festival. And he just made sense. He has authored “Hamlet’s Blackberry” in which he describes the role of technology and how it has changed us. And one item he did mention, was this new inability to maintain a sufficient attention span.

As further food for thought he showed this advertismenet from a major Thai telecommunications company. It speaks for itself.

He also related a type of technology sabbath , that he and his family has practiced for 4 years already, whereby the family turns off their modem for the weekend on a friday evening. I wonder how I would cope 😉

Both the full interview and a highlights packgee can be found here: ABC’s “Big Ideas”

My ageing macbook didn’t quite like the upgrade to Lion. Addittionally, the fact that rosetta is no longer supported is rather crucial when you have a specific piece of hardware that uses custom PowerPc software to run. Yes it may be old but, in my case, that would require replacement of a specific niche bit of hardware.

As long as you have a Snow leopard boot DVD and a time machine backup of your mac pre Lion installation, its actually quite easy.

On would assume you made a time machine backup just before upgrading to Lion?

Place the boot disc into the drive, restart and Press “C” during bootup to get the DVD to be the boot drive. Afterbooting up, before confirming a clean SL install it will prompt you for a restore from a time machine backup. Follow the instructions by reaching for the utilities tab in the menu’s.

After ensuring the time machine drive is connected you will be offered multiple restoration points. Luckily the version number of the OS is indicated. So choosing the last 10.6 version would have you selecting a snow leopard restore.